UPDATE: at ~ 11:14AM local time in Australia, it was repealed!
From ABC: Legislation to scrap the carbon tax has passed the Federal Parliament in a major win for the Abbott Government.
After a lengthy debate, the Senate voted to get rid of the price on carbon, with 39 senators voting for and 32 voting against.
This was the Government’s third attempt to scrap the tax since the election – the first two were rejected by the Senate.
The Australian reports:
THE carbon tax has been repealed, fulfilling Tony Abbott’s “pledge in blood” to abolish the landmark Gillard government scheme.
The Senate passed the government’s amended carbon tax repeal bills by a margin of 39 votes to 32 at 11.14am, with only the Labor Party and the Greens opposing their passage into law.
It was the Senate’s third attempt to pass the repeal legislation.
The vote was held as Bill Shorten gave a clear pledge to take a new carbon pricing mechanism to the next federal election, due in 2016, in the form of an emissions trading scheme.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/carbon-tax-repealed-by-senate-at-the-third-attempt/story-e6frg6xf-1226991963431
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An ill-fated foray that never made much sense
Guest opinion by Phillip Hutchings
With perhaps a few more grandstanding shenanigans in our Federal Senate this week, Australia’s two-year experiment with a Carbon Tax will soon end. Legislation to kill the tax, which was brought in by the left-leaning Labor-Greens coalition in mid-2012, is now being finalised by our one year-old conservative Government.
That carbon tax has cost three prime ministerships, confused the voting population, and achieved pretty much nothing. Other market dynamics have been far more important in changing Australia’s greenhouse emissions, yet it’s politically insensitive to mention them.
The sanctimoniousness of such a tax in Australia is breathtaking. We are an energy heavy-weight, the world’s largest exporter of coal. Soon we will also be the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. At the same time as our Labor prime ministers were being successively culled by infighting over the carbon tax, the world’s biggest oil & gas companies were directing more than two-thirds of global investment in LNG production into Australia, the biggest investment boom ever in this country.
We are an economy built on the world’s hunger for fossil fuels. Yet with our gas and coal sources being either offshore or in remote locations, these vital export industries are mostly hidden from Australian voters.
The carbon tax itself was a lightweight. The theory underlying a carbon tax is to provide a long term price signal to drive a change in the industrial and consumer behaviour. On this score, the Australian tax was doomed to failure. After all, politically it had to appeal to the latte-sipping lefties, but without affecting their wallets.
The outcome – a watered-down policy that was all noise and no effect.
To minimise the economic fall-out, the Labor-Green Government limited the carbon tax to large industrial emitters (more than 25,000 CO2e/yr). Road transport and agriculture was exempt. Put together, that meant only about 185 companies in Australia’s US$ 1.5 trillion economy had to comply. And even those few were only lightly touched.
Industries which are “trade exposed” such as cement or aluminium smelting were mostly excused. They got either 66% or 94.5% of their carbon cost covered by the award of free units.
Just over one-third of Australia’s carbon emissions come from coal-fired electricity generators. And the dirtiest electricity comes from the aging brown-coal plants in Victoria – with almost double the emissions of modern gas-fired plants. Yet being located in a Labor-voting union heartland, they too got off lightly with the first half of their emissions effectively carbon- tax free. Nice.
None of which gave much incentive at all for carbon reduction. It’s hard to see any evidence at all of industries making long term investments in lower carbon-emitting factories or generating plants.
The domestic airlines got slugged with an extra 6 c/litre fuel excise, surely as crude a carbon tax as you can get. How was that supposed to reduce emissions? Yep, sure, aircraft fleets get renewed over time, and you bet, fuel efficiency is a factor when selecting alternative aircraft. But a surcharge on fuel itself was not going to change Qantas’ emissions.
So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax was never going to change emissions itself. It was a neutered program, raising Government revenue but not effective in changing behaviour.
Source – Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2013 Australia’s National Greenhouse Account
Yet, Australia’s greenhouse emissions have been declining for almost eight years. After decades of steady increase, that pause in carbon emissions since 2007 is striking. And it started six years before the carbon tax was implemented. It’s pretty easy to find the main reason for that – a steady fall in national electricity consumption. Latest figures show that Australia’s electricity use is at the lowest level since 2006. And with three-quarters of Australia’s electricity coming from carbon-intensive coal-fired sources, the fall in electricity use has led directly to a pause in carbon emissions.
But what caused Australian consumers to wind back their power use over the past eight years? Simple price elasticity, that’s what. There’s been huge investment in the network, the poles and wires to deliver (as opposed to generate) electricity. In most states, that led to a doubling of retail electricity prices. And yes, consumers did respond to that price signal, changing from electrical profligacy to parsimony. Nothing to do with the carbon tax, it was the regulated electricity supply industry recouping their capital investment.
What did we learn from this? The theory behind a carbon tax works fine – provide a price signal, and the consumer responds. It’s just that in this case, it was nothing to do with the carbon tax and all to do with regulated utilities doubling power prices as they caught up on network investment.
Here’s another little perverse change. Some years ago, I helped a fledgling gas producer negotiate a long term gas sales contract for electricity generation. The customer was a state Government-owned electricity generator, then setting up a new flagship and clean gas-fired generation plant. That helped shift the state’s generation sources ten years ago away from dirty coal, and into cleaner gas.
Yet earlier this year, that generator announced the closure of its gas generation in favour of dirtier coal generation. The reason? With three large export LNG plants now being commissioned for export, that gas is worth more for sale to China than for powering my fridge. In effect, a state Government snubbed its nose at the intent, let alone the price signal, from the Federal carbon tax.
So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax has been a failure. It never could have worked. And politically, it’s been a graveyard. Let’s hope politicians and bureaucrats from more enlightened jurisdictions study it and learn.
Australia’s carbon tax – no wonder it’s about to be buried.
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17 July: ABC: Emma Griffiths: Live blog: Senate looks set to push through carbon tax repeal
Tony Abbott’s promise to “axe the tax” looks set to be fulfilled by the Senate in the next few hours…
Follow ABC News Online’s live blog for updates and commentary as they happen…
10.19: Simon Cullen: Earlier this morning, the Senate voted down a Labor amendment which would’ve converted the carbon tax to a floating carbon price…
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but did they do anything other than leave the door open ?
Horrifying quote from Aussie Senator:
Christine Milne, Senate, Tuesday:
I THINK at some point we will have a website of climate criminals and I would have a few people to put on that list. It would include Dick Warburton, Brian Fisher, David Murray, Maurice Newman, Mitch Hooke and so you could go on, with Chris Mitchell, Gina Rinehart, Innes Willox, Ian Plimer, Rupert Murdoch, George Pell, Andrew Bolt, John Roskam, Martin Ferguson and so on and so forth. In years to come, those people will try to pretend that they did not tear down the climate bills, when they have and the record will clearly show it. … To all those people partying around the corridors, enjoy it because it is your last stand. The fact is you have misjudged the temperature … When we look at the temperature of the planet rising, let us look at the climate science. The fact of the matter is we are on track for four to six degrees of warming. That means people will not survive. Part of the world will be uninhabitable. There will be one million deaths per week for the next 90 years if it gets to 4 degrees.
No one could possibly be that foolish. Honestly.
FANTASTIC!!! As an Australian I am proud of our Govt in fighting for the Scientific truth on Climate Change.
I would like to see our so called “Climate Scientists” being forced to wake up to this truth instead of their constant intellectual crap about “what will happen one day” Hooray!!!
It is ironic that the sun is spotless today and this is right in the middle of the solar cycle! Portending future cooling?
Although Sarah Hansen-Young tweeted “sorry” to her future grandchildren https://twitter.com/sarahinthesen8/status/489582985679613952
my children will be able to keep the heaters on a bit longer at night for my grandchildren.
This is great news for freedom-loving non-socialist countries around the world. I hope they take note. Which countries are non-socialist???
Bulldust says:
July 16, 2014 at 6:18 pm
And there was much rejoicing!
Amid the wailing and gnashing of teeth. 🙂
I’ve lived in Chicago my whole life, this is nothing more than a minor setback that will invigorate the troops.
Right ?
Meanwhile the Australian Labour Party (the equivalent of the US Democrats) vow to bring it back if they win government, in conjunction with their Greens party allies. Although the Labour Party vowed not to introduce it prior to the last election, then introduced it, then vowed to “terminate” the carbon tax at the last election, and have now decided to bring it back. So their position could still change a half dozen times before the next election anyway.
We are very happy. Truth has overcome the forces of ignorance, for the moment anyway since here is what our Greens leader said a couple hours ago:
That would be accelerating at 0.000 C/year according to the climate data.
Very hard to imagine how global warming could accelerate less fast than this.
TomR,Worc,MA,USA says: July 16, 2014 at 8:01 pm Horrifying quote from Aussie Senator:
“Christine Milne, Senate, Tuesday: ….. There will be one million deaths per week for the next 90 years if it gets to 4 degrees.”
Try back of envelope calculation:
Current world population 7 thousand million. Average life expectancy 70 years. Hence annual number of deaths 100 million. Hence deaths per week 1 923 077.
She is right, you know – there will be one million (actually nearer two million) deaths per week!
Perhaps she is forecasting that the weekly death rate will fall to 1 million per week. If so, then those of us in the late 70s can look forward to a long and happy life.
Thank you, Tony, and all the other Liberal Party members who have worked so hard for this outcome.
TomR,Wore, MA,USA July 16, 2014 8:01pm
“And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail” — Lord Byron
Eugene WR Gallun
This is a huge victory, but after going and reading the words of these true believers – in the quotes from so-called “esteemed” senators, the tweets from the Green Party Hyphen – it feels as if it’s a Phyrric one. These people really believe. They are beyond hope. They start their arguments with “Because science,” and then follow it up with nothing but pure, unfettered, unscientific emotion. It’s disturbing.
This is no surprise; the fringes of the political spectrum run on emotion. The fact that it is able to mascarade as “science” and “public policy” is mind-boggling. They are the answer to the Religious Right in the US with two very dangerous additions: A) they want to control EVERY aspect of your life – economic AND personal, and B) they are too stupid to even see it. It’s emotion and belief, mascarading as truth. Vile, disgusting filth.
Cherish this day, normal people of Australia, because they have way too much invested in this to give up. Instead of sending sanctimonious tweets to your future offspring, make a real difference and fight to make sure this tax stays buried in the compost heap whence it was unearthed from.
I wonder if i could have the status of ” Climate Refugee ” by moving from the insanity the US has started with the GW agenda to AU?
Way to go guys, gratz.
I’ve been hard on Joanne Nova lately due to wiggle matching promotion but indeed she was instrumental in this profound backlash as was in a more subtle sense John Ray of the Greenie Watch blog. Christopher Monckton’s tour or two down under was also profoundly important. As whole countries fall to skepticism, the future will fill with demands that climate alarm skeptics be sought out for their rational opinions on policy matters in general. For the first time in history, the people involved in a monstrous scientific scam have been recorded in real time in a permanent archive thanks to a few Silicon Valley archivists.
Even India just declared Greenpeace to be a national threat. That’s over a billion people learning about yet another awakening amounting really to just a crazy cult. China is obviously only interested in climate alarm to promote their own needs over those of the West, so that adds another billion people to the skeptical cause. Africa is already on our side, being destroyed by Greenpeace, so another billion people we can count as allies. Russia hasn’t uttered a peep of climate alarm, but being so cold we only get a fraction of a billion there, converted. Canada is strongly skeptical now, a tiny sliver of a billion.
That leave’s Europe to conquer.
“The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
Putting strong pressure on working scientists to speak out lest they be drawn into being further enablers of a scam is now the best lever, as is outreach to urban professionals, both who lean left wing politically, so it becomes equally important to distance climate alarm skepticism from partisan politics now that the right wing is using it as some big crazy conspiracy theory as if simpleton Sarah “Fruit Fly Research in Paris, France” Palin was their divine goddess.
“The men who have changed the world…never succeeded by winning over the powerful, but always by stirring the masses. The first method is a resort to intrigue and only brings limited results. The latter is the course of genius and changes the face of the world.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
Cool & The Gang
http://youtu.be/3GwjfUFyY6M
I have champagne in the fridge! 😀
TomR,Worc,MA,USA
Christine Milne just shows that you don’t have to be bright to become a senator. She makes W Bush look intelligent.
In fact within the greens its the opposite, intelligence is a disadvantage, but I can tell you she isn’t respected outside her own party. All she can do is pander to their pathetic little prejudices with Monty Python like witchhunt logic. The best evidence not to listen to the greens is their words themselves. Nobody will vote such nincompoops into real power, unless we abandon centuries or rationalism and reason.
What a joke!, making lists of anyone who disagrees with you as some sort of round up criminal system. She missed her chance, she should have been born in early 20th century Russia.
HGW xx/7 says:
July 16, 2014 at 8:59 pm
++++++++++++++++++++
Don’t give up hope. Once the cycle of studying liberal arts gives way to studying actual science like chemistry, physics, mathematics, geology, geography, geophysics (well maybe that;s too much) water and earth sciences we will see a change in attitude. Everything has a cycle. It must be hard science up soon.
Youtube 4’37: ‘The Parliament finally listened’: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqkuwyRHWh0
“So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax has been a failure. It never could have worked. And politically, it’s been a graveyard. Let’s hope politicians and bureaucrats from more enlightened jurisdictions study it and learn.” This is what will be the death knell of CAGW. Not truth,economics, or the media. It’s a political play so only votes can kill it.
And the reaction from the White House (… is he back from that golfing junket to Florida yet?) to come swift and mealy-mouthed. Miliseconds til the word “pariah” is used. Josh Ernest will josh the press earnestly from his elevated stool in the Kindergarten room.
Seriously, you have to wonder how much pressure U.S. put on Australia, perhaps through the World Bank or other means, not to repeal. Bad, bad example you fellows just set.
She makes W Bush look intelligent.
“George W. Bush was straightforward and direct. The stupidest misconception was that he was stupid.” ~ Tony Blair
(It is true that dubya was not the brightest president. He is only somewhat smarter than I am.)
davidmhoffer says:
July 16, 2014 at 7:54 pm
I’ve long been of the opinion that the climate debate will be settled not by science, but by economics.
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I’ve long been of the opinion that climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 will also be determined by the electorate.
Well done climate “scientists”. Did you enjoy your worthless and destructive lives ?
Rejoice ye blokes
In happy Oz!
On whom one of
The dumbest laws
That ever greens
Managed to foist
Now’s the petard
By which they’re hoist
Yet also quash
The “primal whine”
That will inform
The party-line
Dictated by
The hive’s Al Gore
Who this triumph
Will sure deplore
By pointing out
The CO2
That Gore’s good-times
Emit a-spew
And by outing
Ev’ry hive-leech
Who does not live
The cant they preach
Which is to say
Most ev’ry strain
Of greenshirt on
The gravy-train
Oh, HOOOOOORAAAAAAYYYYY!!!
SUCH good news!
Good on ya, Australia!!!
#(:))
Grinning from ear to ear, here in the U.S.A..
WAY — TO — GO!!